Hey y'all! Happy Friday. Sorry for the light week. My bestie was here until Wednesday, and I'm now prepping for next week! I figured it was a good time to check in on the state of cleanliness in my apartment. I know you guys are just dying to know how many dust bunnies are tumbling about. The answer: Fewer, because Westley is starting to chase them down and eat them for us. Thanks, West!

No but seriously, folks. I've taken you on my rather tortuous journey of trying to maintain a clean apartment, and it does feel more important than ever now that West is mobile (high fiber content of dust bunnies notwithstanding). We started with my default, which is basically a serious clean, from top down, of the whole apartment (until I run out of time) each week. The obvious flaw was that an entire day - often a weekend day that could and should have been spent with the fam - would be lost to cleaning. So I set out to see if a better system existed. I tried starting with a deep clean and then engaging in maintenance or speed cleaning to keep things up. You can read a deeper dive on it here, but in short, it didn't really work. Partly because I didn't start with a deep enough clean (perhaps I'll get to that level now that West is a little older) and partly because I didn't feel like I was doing a good enough job half-assing it, which is what the speed clean felt like. 

Then, I tried to put myself on a cleaning schedule, wherein each day was matched to a list of jobs that needed to be done, and I'd do them all first thing. Remember this?

Yeah. Total fail. I just hated it. I mean absolutely abhorred it. Could not stick to it for even a day. I think I made a fatal error in making each day too intense, so that it was really tough to even check things off the list, which made me feel like a failure, while at the same time trapped in my home trying to squeeze in some morning chores before I could do anything more interesting. I began to think that a cleaning schedule just wasn't for me - and that made me seriously doubt that any non-stay-at-homers would be able or want to stick to it.

And then, a game changer.

Our Roomba, Oscar, who came to live with us after Prime Day, is my favorite thing ever. I think I love him even more than my Vitamix, and possibly more than Bret. Not only does he just do what I ask, with no questions or argument, but he has actually changed the way I clean my house, thusly: Nearly every night, I put up the chairs and make sure the floors are clear, and then let Oscar have the run of the "front of the house" - our entire kitchen, family room, entry and dining room area, which are really all just part of one large room. That means that I wake up to clean floors every morning. They still need to be mopped, but that takes about one minute since the floors are swept/vacuumed and the chairs are up, so I do it quickly before starting the day. And having clean floors turns out to be the household equivalent of a made bed: In addition to feeling so much better about setting West on the floor, the whole place looks and feels cleaner.  All I have to do is dust and pick up to really have a clean apartment. It's not just that Oscar is spending time I don't have to clean the floors: it's that having him do it has changed the way I feel about cleaning the apartment. I never realized before how much the floors were really a huge component of my cleaning time, and since they came last (every cleaning instructional will tell you to start from the top and work your way down) they were just part of a whole routine that was my cleaning default. It's now much easier to build up from the clean floors, and squeeze in cleaning tasks wherever I have time. So, where I wouldn't have jumped into a serious clean at 9 pm on a Friday, I'll now grab a cloth and my homemade cleaner and wipe down the bookshelves while watching TV, or if I have a few minutes before it's time to get Lou, I'll get my magic eraser and get at the marks on the wall. The result is that the whole place feels, on average, cleaner than it ever used to.

Feeling convinced to get a Roomba yet? If you're unsure, it also provides hours of entertainment for a four-year-old. Even I can get mesmerized, watching him go about his business.

Yeah, I know, I'm a bit of an evangelist about this. But since Oscar has so completely changed the way I clean our apartment, he's almost rendered moot the day-to-day cleaning conundrum I was facing before. Funnily enough, the stuff that Oscar doesn't take care of has naturally fallen into a schedule: Laundry on Monday and Thursday, bathrooms on Friday.  And that's all working out, for a normal cleaning protocol.

Which brings me to: Any tips on super deep cleans out there? Folks are staying here over Thanksgiving week while we're in Philly, and I want/need things to be super shiny. Baseboards and window treatments included. I've seen pretty intense spring cleaning checklists that I'm using as guidance...but hours into this morning, I've only got a clean fridge and freezer to show for it. (They are delightfully clean, however). Of course, I'm working in nap-time segments, but still. If you've got any tips and tricks for really cleaning your whole place, doing so efficiently, making sure to get in any nooks and crannies you think are too often overlooked, and, specifically, tips on stove cleaning, I'd love if you'd share. (I keep seeing that to clean stove top grates, you should stick them in a closed bag with ammonia over night and then wipe clean, but I have a pretty healthy fear of ammonia. Does anyone have any other ideas that have worked for them?) I've considered hiring someone for a deep clean, but then I just don't. Tell me what works for you!

Thanks for checking in, and for all your tips!